ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

[In Lady Blessington's Conversations with Lord Byron these lines are thus introduced: 'I will give you some stanzas I wrote yesterday (said Byron); they are as simple as even Wordsworth himself could write, and would do for music."]

BUT once I dared to lift my eyes,
To lift my eyes to thee;
And, since that day, beneath the skies,
No other sight they see.

In vain sleep shuts them in the night,
The night grows day to me,
Presenting idly to my sight

What still a dream must be.

A fatal dream- for many a bar
Divides thy fate from mine;
And still my passions wake and war,
But peace be still with thine.
[First published, 1833.]

TO THE COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON

You have ask❜d for a verse- the request, In a rhymer, 't were strange to deny; But my Hippocrene was but my breast, And my feelings (its fountain) are dry.

Were I now as I was, I had sung

What Lawrence has pencill'd so well; But the strain would expire on my tongue, And the theme is too soft for my shell.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

I am a fool of passion, and a frown
Of thine to me is as an adder's eye.
To the poor bird whose pinion fluttering
down

Wafts unto death the breast it bore so

high;

Such is this maddening fascination grown, So strong thy magic or so weak am I.

ON THIS DAY I COMPLETE MY THIRTY-SIXTH YEAR

[Moore relates in the Life that on his last birthday Byron 'came from his bedroom into the apartment where Colonel Stanhope and some others were assembled and said with a smile, "You were complaining the other day that I never write any poetry now. This is my birthday, and I have just finished something which, I think, is better than what I usually write."- The pathos and sincerity of the verses are echoed in Mangan's The Nameless One, though the spirit of the two poems is not the same.]

'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

[It is not necessary to say that these poems are concerned with the separation between Lord Byron and his wife. They are so distinct in character that it has seemed best to separate them from among the other Miscellaneous Poems.]

FARE THEE WELL

[Moore relates on the authority of Byron's Memoranda that these stanzas were written 'under the swell of tender recollections' as the poet sat one night musing in the study.. the tears falling fast over the paper as he wrote them.' Mr. Coleridge avers that there are no tear-marks on the original draft of the poem. 'Tis pity.]

Alas! they had been friends in Youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth:
And constancy lives in realms above;
And Life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain;

But never either found another

To free the hollow heart from paining —
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs, which had been rent asunder;
A dreary sea now flows between,

But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,

The marks of that which once hath been.'
COLERIDGE'S Christabel.

FARE thee well! and if for ever,
Still for ever, fare thee well:
Even though unforgiving, never
'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.

Would that breast were bared before thee
Where thy head so oft hath lain,
While that placid sleep came o'er thee
Which thou ne'er canst know again:

Would that breast, by thee glanced over,
Every inmost thought could show !
Then thou wouldst at last discover

'T was not well to spurn it so.

10

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Shalt feel far more than thou inflictest now;
Feel for thy vile self-loving self in vain,
And turn thee howling in unpitied pain.
May the strong curse of crush'd affections
light

Back on thy bosom with reflected blight!
And make thee, in thy leprosy of mind,
As loathsome to thyself as to mankind!
Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate,
Black as thy will for others would create:
Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust, 91
And thy soul welter in its hideous crust.
Oh, may thy grave be sleepless as the
bed,-

The widow'd couch of fire, that thou hast spread!

[blocks in formation]
« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »